Strategies
DomiNations is a strategy game; meaning that you need to plan ahead if you want to achieve and win in this game. These strategies shown below can give tips and help you from becoming a small, primitive village to a conquering city-state. Attacking Strategies * If you are attacking, look for upgrading defenses for weak spots. * If you advance an age, the cost of searching for a battle will increase by 50 gold every age - The amount of loot you will get from lower ages than you will be reduced per age as well. * Upgrade your War Academy to Level 2 so you can use 2 battle tactics in one battle (good combination is health and sabotage) * Always try to attack with a blessing for your troops. *When attacking, focus on 1 thing. Loot or winning. Then, go for the Town/City Center for an instant win by rallying. When you face an easy opponent, go for all his defenses so you don't lose your army. *When attacking, find a weak spot and don't attack where the defenses are the strongest. If the defender looks too strong, don't waste your troops or your medals. *Battle opponents are chosen by the game using your medal count - your opponents get stronger the more medals you get. (even players in higher ages than you who have lower medal counts). *Mercenaries do NOT return after battle. You have to re-hire them. *If you do NOT destroy all defensive buildings - your surviving troops don't return after battle and you have to retrain them. *In an attack, use the Rally Button to get all of your troops to attack the same area. (The Rally button is the red circle with swords pointing to the center at the bottom left of where you deploy your troops). While they are in the rally area, deploy a war tactic like First Aid to heal your troops or Barrage to attack enemy troops while they are in the rally area. *Be aware of traps - what appears to be a weak spot may be crowded with traps. It is usually worth sending one heavy infantry unit to set off traps before deploying valuable troops or wall miners. Ambush traps can be easily dealt with when activated by using barrage tactic. *Deploy individual heavy infantry next to unprotected outer buildings. This serves the dual purpose of doing significant damage to the base and distracting and scattering defenders. *Use demolition tactic to destroy defensive buildings like rocket arsenals and high-level bunkers. You can even use it to destroy the town center and get a bonus quick victory star, though it will deal 85% less damage to Town Centers and storage buildings. *Check here for a full list of attacking plan Economic Strategies * Use your Town/City Center as a crossroads to connect each building to your road. Click Info on the road to see which buildings and roads glow green to show they are connected. The more buildings connected to the roads running to the Town Center, the higher the percentage of gold you can collect from them, and the higher the health your Town Center will have. * Always collect from your farms and caravans before you leave the game because the attacker can steal 50% from them and only 25% from your storage. Only upgrade your gold/food storage just before you need to (so the 25% is more gold/food that is safe). * Plan ahead, you're going to need room. Clear forests in a smart way otherwise you'll end up basing your city layout on it, square or rectangle (look at other layouts, then you can pick and choose). *You are going to have to make choices, do your research on which nation you're going to pick and which wonders you're going to build. *Go through ALL of the library levels and check every set to see what you can get if you research at the library. Once you know what you want, you can target the early research to get it faster and leave the things you don't care about. *In order to gain trade goods, it is often beneficial to leave 2-4 citizens free to harvest fruit trees and gold mines and hunt animals, but then put them to work immediately once down harvesting the mines and fruit trees. *At the university, Chief Hiawatha and Mansa Musa should be the first to be researched because they are extremely useful with resources. Once you have a level 2 university, go for Emperor Montezuma, which gives you help with trade goods. *Remember that you can use blessings in order to gain wealth quickly (gathering blessing, animal blessing etc...)(The animal blessing is only helpful if you have citizens to hunt the animals in the time period.) Defensive Strategies *Defense is important - without proper security your town looks weak, your resources will be effortlessly stolen and you will not be chosen for or be unpopular in world wars. Good defenses are expensive but worthwhile in the long run. * Pick your defensive strategy for your city. If you want to protect your medals, then use a pushing base (where the Town/City Center is defended and winning defenses is its main focus). If you want to protect your resources, then use a farming base (where only resources are protected and not the Town/City Center). You only have to lose one/two star (ie. Town/City Center destroyed and a star collected in less than a minute) to lose the battle. * It's better to defend a few buildings for a 100% than protect all for 50%. You can't protect everything, so choose what you want to defend, resources or medals. A hybrid base (50/50; where both the Town/City Center and resources are defended) is an option, but this is weaker against both. * Try not to have a single big wall around everything - once an attacking force gets inside they are contained by the walls to destroy everything inside. Section off valuable items/defenses in compartments as for your defensive strategy or have multiple layers of walls protecting your resources/defenses. * Spread out your resource buildings so its harder for the attacker to destroy them all at once. * Defensive buildings that are upgrading won't work during battle. So if you are upgrading them, move them outside of defenses while they upgrade, or do so on a peace treaty. * Upgrade your Temple to Level 2 for the Tower Blessing for stronger defenses. The Fortification, Air defense and Defender blessings are also great. * When you get attacked and you lose the Town Center, you will lose your reinforcement from your allies. Keep that in mind before you ask for troops. The alliance troops are lost, because they serve as defenders for your town/city. They will spawn from your Town Center when attacked. * Don't forget your walls, it might seem like a drag to upgrade your walls, but you'll find that they're VERY important, and can be the biggest factor in how often you are attacked. If you have walls which separate different areas, remember to upgrade the internal walls. FIRST - Troops will get in, especially with Wall Breachers, you want to make it much harder to get across to the other sections. *Most buildings have a no-deploy region around them (Shown in translucent white when moving buildings). Make sure this has no gaps, especially within walls, as this will allow attackers to place troops in the middle of your base. Do not be tempted to use such gaps to bait traps - this does your enemies more help than harm. It is also advisable to space buildings out at the edge of the map, as this forces attackers to place troops farther from their targets and gives defenses more time to start operating. *Traps are a great way to catch an attacker off guard. Upgrading them may seem pointless, but outdated traps are practically useless. Remember to rearm them after an attack. Spike traps are good against wall breachers, so placing them next to an apparent mild weakness in your wall system can often ruin your adversary's planned strategy. *Defensive buildings can be paired to cover each other's weaknesses. For example, placing a ballista tower next to a catapult or redoubt is far more effective than any of these alone, often necessitating the use of a sabotage tactic. *Remember to activate a general before you leave the game, so they can defend your city under attack. *A garrison behind or near a wall can be useful to get rid of saboteurs/commandoes. *An ambush trap is a good distraction, particularly against cavalry, because troops will abandon the building they are attacking and fight the ambushers instead. This makes them good when paired with a ballista tower. *Some wonders have defensive bonuses. Put them in whichever position best exploits them. *When designing your War Base, always use a pushing base. There is no incentive to protect resource buildings here, because the resources stolen from them are not your own. *There is no reason to protect your army buildings, Library, or Temple. *If you are British, Chinese or Korean you can create a very effective structure similar to a tower by surrounding your Command Post with a wall without gates. The same applies to a rocket arsenal. *Remember that war is not only about strength and fighting, but also about psychology. Try and intimidate your enemies and shake them off by having an impressive set of walls, defensive buildings and useful wonders. It is always easier and better to deal with things without having to fight. *Unusual defensive strategies are often best, as they force the attacker to try new strategies, so don't be afraid to innovate. Base example.JPG|Example of well protected resources Other Strategies *Join an alliance. Even if you aren't social, you can always learn from each other. *Look at a lot of other players base layouts, both in your Alliance and the overall leaderboard. Looking at players only just above your level helps more than looking at top tier players with many more resources. Talk to your alliance members, and ask on the forums. Knowledge is power! *Don't advance an age until you are ready. Have all your defensive buildings upgraded to the max, or you will be very vulnerable. Upgrading all troops is also advisable, because finding easy multiplayer targets becomes a lot more difficult every age. *Be wise and use the Wiki! DomiNations Ally Wars Tournaments Reference * https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexonm-games/dominations/tactics-and-strategies * Category:Strategies